Fey, Inc. makes transition Ashley Implement

February 13, 2009|By Tony Bender, Special to the Farm ForumFrom the Ashley, N.D., Tribune

Change can be a good thing-even if hardly anyone with stodgy German-Russian blood in his veins will admit it. Whatever your particular stance on the subject, change is inevitable. Lyle Fey has seen a lot of change in the 37 years that have passed since his father, Leroy, a farmer, decided he wanted to make a living selling the John Deere tractors he admired. Fey, Inc. has been a part of Lyle Fey's life since that day in 1971 when Leroy bought the dealership. After graduating from NDSSC in Wahpeton, in 1979, Lyle returned to the company. Clyde, his younger brother, came on board in 1982. Now, Lyle and Clyde, face their biggest change. For the first time since they bought the business from their father in 1995, the John Deere dealership will no longer carry the Fey name. It is officially Ashley Implement, now. Big change. The sale of the dealership in recent days to a small group of North Dakota investors, who own five other dealerships, did not come without some soul searching. Like all small implement dealerships, Fey, Inc. has ironically been sowing the seeds of change with each new technological advance that meant more horsepower, more efficiency and fewer farmers. “When I first became active in the business, a 125 HP tractor was a significant purchase-not that it still isn't,” Lyle says, “but there was real prestige. You were really considered quite an operator.” These days, you could get a 560 HP John Deere tractor, if your operation or ego demanded one. Time, attrition and reality forced Lyle to take stock of the future of the dealership. He went through some slow years struggling to pay interest on the new machinery in stock. Without the buying power of larger dealerships, he realized his situation was a lot like a good poker player with a bad hand. Sometimes it doesn't matter how good you are or how hard you try. It ain't in the cards. Lyle gets philosophical as he contemplates the changes that have gnawed away at his industry and small towns in general. He calls it the Wal-Mart Effect. “We did it to ourselves,” he says. In the interest of profit things get biggerÉ bigger... bigger... and initiative and greed become indistinguishable. “When is enough, enough?” he wonders. “Everything has been merged, consolidated, remerged and reconsolidated. Is that good?” he asks rhetorically. He shrugs. It's a philosophical question that has no easy answer. It is what it is. Time will expose wisdom and folly. Some business will surely always remain local, but as for big-ticket businesses-consolidation is the direction things are going. You get bigger or get out. Enter Bill Scoville. He's part owner of the group that also owns LaMoure Equipment, Ellendale Implement, Wentz Equipment (Napoleon), Marshall County Implement and Milnor Implement. Scoville, who is the general manager of all the locations, is empathetic about the tough decisions small dealerships are facing. In 2008, the group bought Wentz Equipment in Napoleon. Scoville says that John Deere itself is effectively encouraging these consolidations. From a corporate standpoint, it's understandable. You want to reward your best performers. So, with new machinery in high demand, the company rewarded those operations with a history of high sales by supplying them first allowing them to sell even more and dooming small dealerships to lower levels of performance. But for small dealers already facing other disadvantages, it was a bitter pill. It's pretty tough sell a product when you can't get it, and that was the situation Fey, Inc. found itself in. In the high stakes game of Economies of Scale, the guy with the small stack of chips almost never makes a comeback. Lyle says that some years ago the parent company wondered if it could be more efficient with fewer with fewer, larger dealerships. But he and other dealers on the front lines convinced them that losing the small branches altogether would wound the company. Losing them altogether would leave customers long distances from service. And that would hurt the brand in the long run. In spite of the bumps, Lyle Fey still bleeds John Deere green. “My objective has always been to have a John Deere sign and the parts and service that come with that in this community,” he says. “This community has been very good and very loyal to the John Deere trademark.” Scoville has confidence in the future of the dealership and the industry in general. He believes the community is getting the best of both worlds - the financial stability that comes with the consolidation as well as familiarity. Lyle will continue as manager and Clyde will retain his sales and machinery delivery roles. Based on successes with the other dealerships, Scoville expects to “double business in Ashley in two years.” And those might be modest projections, he says. “I think this is going to be real good for the community. Now Lyle's customers will have access to all the used and new equipment at all of our stores.” Scoville says he expects to expand the staff in Ashley from seven to 10 or 11. That's welcome news for Lyle, but he is quick to recognize “that Fey, Inc. would be nothing without our present and past employees. They made this company what it is today.” The newly christened Ashley Implement will be able to offer field service, and with the local network of service trucks, technicians from other locales can be dispatched where needed. Plus, with a vast inventory of parts available regionally, Ashley area farmers can expect to be up and running faster than ever. Ashley farmers will now have ready access to AMS (Ag Management Solutions) specialists who can train farmers and troubleshoot AutoSteer issues, the system that uses GPS to guide tractors and operate planters and combines. Eventually a driver will not be needed at all. Scoville says, “You and I will see that in our lifetime. We have the technology today, the only holdback are safety issues.” Once engineers are certain that renegade tractors won't plow up stretches of Highway 11 or plant corn in Lake Hoskins, big changes are coming. It's hard to imagine a farmer running things with a joystick and a computer monitor, but who could have imagined the things we take for granted now-cell phones, wireless money transfers and point and click communication, Lyle says. He marvels that today's farmer has at his disposal vastly more technology and computing power than NASA did when it landed a man on the moon. Despite his traditionalist soul, he can't hide his enthusiasm for those labor saving advances. For the often elusive Lyle Fey, transition means Lyle will be busier than usual for a while, but as the dust settles he seems, well, satisfied that things have worked out just about as well as they could have. He rises from his desk, where papers are typically arranged in a precise fashion. That hasn't changed. Some things never do. Tony Bender is the publisher of the Ashley Tribune in Ashley, ND.